Cellular communication carriers provide a relatively closed network environment with well defined points of access to the outside world, where subscribers can gain access to the network for making voice calls, sending text messages or otherwise communicatively accessing other points of interests. In essence many carrier networks are private networks, which are made available on a subscription basis. Such a policy provides greater opportunities for security, and allows the carriers to better control and/or police access to the network and the management of the flow of information supporting voice and data communications, which in turn better enables the carriers to provide security services, such as anti-virus protection or parental control services.
More traditionally, cellular communication carriers' needed to access points outside of the relatively closed private network environment in instances in which voice communication calls needed to connect with a call destination that was not part of the carrier's network. In such instances, a gateway or interface node could provide access to the non-carrier controlled call destination via the POTS network and/or another carrier's network. More recently, data communications are becoming an increasing portion of the overall network traffic, and access to public data networks, such as the Internet, is becoming increasingly desirable for more and more of the data traffic as a data source, a data destination, and/or a portion of the routing. In some instances, a subscriber device might even access the carrier's network via a non-network controlled interface, such as a wireless LAN access point.
In such an instance, in order to maintain or enhance security, the subscriber device will often access the carrier network via a tunnel mode connection, which encapsulates private network information in a public network transmission unit. In essence, the private network data information, as well as the private network protocol information, appears to the public network as data encoded as part of the public network transmission unit, such as a packet. Often times the private network information is encrypted using a set of encryption keys that are known only by the data source and destination, which are part of the private network. In this way, a subscriber device can access the private network via a virtual private network that might extend through portions of a public network.
However, in some instances it may be desirable for the subscriber device to bypass the tunnel in order to communicate more directly with other trusted devices, which may or may not be otherwise accessible by the subscriber. One such example might include a media center, which could be used to store music, pictures and/or video, which has been created, is licensed and/or is owned by a subscriber, and which the subscriber may desire to access via a subscriber device, but not store on the subscriber device. Furthermore, it may be desirable to be able to synchronize subscriber data, such as contact information, and calendar appointments between a subscriber's multiple devices, such as a personal computer and a cellular telephone. In such instances, it may be beneficial to be able to download the content more directly, such as from the media server, or between the cellular telephone and the personal computer, especially in instances where one of the communicating devices might not be connected to the public network, and/or might not be otherwise accessible.
In other instances, it may be desirable to communicate the information directly and avoid the costs, that might be associated with communicating data via the carrier controlled network, and/or otherwise increase the traffic congestion on the carrier controlled network, when the intended communication partner is present within a trusted communication environment or a trusted portion of the network.
However, letting a subscriber device access any address outside of a tunnel mode connection is generally not acceptable for the carrier. Furthermore, a subscriber may not always know whether a communication partner is present within a trusted communication environment or a trusted portion of the network. Consequently, the present inventor has recognized that it would be beneficial if the subscriber device could automatically configure the management and routing of communication information between a tunnel mode connection and a more direct communication connection which bypasses the tunnel mode connection.